


Friends Who Bang

by lucyrne (theungenue)



Series: The Contract [1]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Friends With Benefits, Heavy Petting, Implied Sexual Content, Jokes, Making Out, Non-Consensual Tickling, Partial Nudity, Resolved Sexual Tension, Stress Relief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 16:19:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15844914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theungenue/pseuds/lucyrne
Summary: Rhys and Sasha have a heart-to-heart about their post-vault lives that leads to something more. Prequel to ‘The Contract,’ a friends with benefits fic.





	Friends Who Bang

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this ages ago to figure out why Rhys and Sasha started hooking up in 'The Contract.' Was supposed to be more smutty, but then I realized the smut bits were the only thing holding me back from posting it, so I went around them. Still gets a little spicy though.

“Is--is that a bed?” Sasha asked. She shot him a look that was both confused and a little pitying. “Rhys. Do you sleep in your office?”

A queen-sized mattress covered in an off-white fitted sheet and patchy blanket lay flush against the wall on the far side of the room. Piles of folded clothing were lined up nearby, as well as a bedside table Rhys grabbed from an Atlas storeroom. If not for the bed and the clothes on the floor, the room would have appeared like any other office.

Rhys had been holed up in that room writing code and puzzling over numbers for so long, he forgot the whole bed thing was weird. And nothing really sucked the energy out of an office tour than finding the CEO’s sad sleeping corner.

To salvage whatever pretense of professionalism he had left, Rhys ran his fingers down the lapels of his dark jacket. “I’m a business owner, not a homeowner. Give me five years and I’ll give you a tour of my penthouse on Eden-Five.” He hazarded a cocky laugh, which died in his throat when he saw Sasha wasn’t buying it. “But yeah...I actually do live here. Uh, we can skip the office part of the tour if you want to see the guns. You like guns. Let’s see the guns.”

Usually the mention of firearms made Sasha’s face light up. Instead, she studied him with those bright green eyes of hers. Rhys was once again reminded that though she wasn’t as good at it as Fiona, Sasha knew how to read people. He didn’t have a pickpocket’s perception, but Rhys thought he saw pity in her face.

No, not pity...understanding.

“This Atlas stuff hasn’t been easy on you, huh?” Sasha said.

“No,” Rhys said. He rubbed the corner of his eyes, letting the exhaustion he had been hiding show for the first time. “But it’s what I signed up for. And it beats getting shot at everyday.” He now studied Sasha in return. “What about you? It’s been a minute since we last caught up.”

“I’m just bartender these days, so there’s not much to tell. It doesn’t really compare to, you know--” she gestured around his office, “--CEO stuff.”

“That’s not true,” Rhys said, leaning against his desk. “Just because what you’re doing is different than me doesn’t mean it isn’t equally soul-crushing. Besides, I want to hear about it. I’ve missed you.”

They locked eyes, a small smile creeping on Sasha’s lips. It was as if she was looking straight through him, but had been surprised by what she saw. Pleasantly surprised. “Okay. Hmm, where to start? So my manager is this creep named Doug…”

And so the Atlas tour ended in Rhys’ office. They lounged on the floor, Rhys leaning against one wall while Sasha lay sprawled on her back, staring up at the ceiling. It was cathartic, ranting about the thankless work that went in with being the CEO of a company no one remembered anymore, listening to Sasha vent about the petty politics of her bar.

As the conversation moved, so did they. When Sasha complained of the smelly carpet, Rhys told her she could lay on the bed instead, if it was more comfortable. It wasn’t long before he wound up joining her, having discovered that she was right, the carpet _did_ smell like armpit. They kicked off their shoes, draped their jackets over Rhys’ creaky office chair, and lay side-by-side on the mattress.

Maybe it was because they were hanging out on a bed, but they talked a lot about sleep, how elusive it was even when the bags under their eyes had darkened into two ever-present shadows. Rhys mentioned that he had started picking at his eyebrows when deep in thought, and it worried him that one day he might look in the mirror and have none left. Sasha showed him the ends of her braids, slowly unraveling from a lack of care. It was weird, bonding the deepening cracks in their own facades. But it was comforting, too, knowing that Rhys wasn’t the only one whose post-vault life sucked.

“How do you keep yourself from plucking out all of your eyebrow hairs?” Rhys asked. “Because I’m running out of coping mechanisms, and I think they might be next.”

Sasha sat up, pursing her lips together as she thought. Rhys watched her, suddenly more interested in what her mouth was doing than his own question. “I dunno. Target practice. Eating. Sewing.”

“You sew?”

“I make all my clothes. What, you think I _bought_ this topsy-turvy outfit? With money?”

Rhys, who used to wear expensive, topsy-turvy outfits exclusively, muttered that asymmetry was stylish on certain people. She laughed at that, her first real laugh of the night, and it was a sound that made Rhys wish he was funnier so he could hear it more often.

Sasha held her breath for a fraction of a second before continuing. “Sex always helps me relax.”

The temperature in the room rose by a few, almost imperceptible degrees. Rhys became aware of Sasha’s steady breathing, how close they were sitting beside each other, the fact they had been hanging out on his bed. His eyes darted towards their jackets, hanging off the back of his chair, discarded without a single thought. His heart picked up speed as he wondered if this was somehow calculated. No, it was more likely that he had misheard her, that he was so strung out and lonely and desperate that even the mention of sex sent his mind to places it shouldn’t go.

Rhys blinked a couple times, refusing to let his composure slip and expose something vulnerable. “Uh, what?”

“Sex is a good stress reliever,” Sasha repeated. The piercing way she stared at him was both challenging and curious. “You disagree? I know not everyone sees sex that way.”

“No,” he said, his cheeks growing hot. “I don’t. I mean I _do_. I mean, like, I don’t disagree. Sex is a favorite stress reliever of mine. Don’t know why I don’t have more of it, ha, ha, haaaaaa.”

Rhys looked away to keep Sasha from glimpsing his shrieking, internal panic. He considered finding a piece of glass and stabbing himself in the temple again to erase his recent memory, or maybe to just end it all so he’d never have to face the consequences of what his stupid, bullshitting mouth just said. If there was no glass, a ballpoint pen might work.

No, drastic measures like that would only make it even _more_ obvious that Rhys’ sex life wasn’t what it used to be. Or what he would like it to be.

Fiona had once said that she thought Sasha liked him, but then they stepped inside a vault and got too busy running for their lives to discuss the subject any further. By the time they got back, Rhys thought the moment to act on her crush on him or his crush on her had gone. Now he wondered if that attraction was still mutual. She was the one pushing the conversation in this direction. Could it be a hint?

“So what are you going to do?” Sasha asked. “Will you still have eyebrows the next time we see each other?”

Rhys cleared his throat. “Not sure. I can’t shoot straight to save my ass. Everything I eat is old and comes out of a can, which I find the opposite of relaxing. Sorry, but I’m too wealthy to sew my own clothes. And, well...”

Rhys’ eyes drifted down to her pretty, distracting mouth. When his eyes flicked back up to hers, Rhys saw that not only had Sasha noticed the direction of his gaze, but also that she was doing the exact same thing to him. The answer to Sasha’s own question was written all over her face.

Caught in the middle of a heartbeat, Rhys leaned forward and kissed her.

Sasha responded in kind immediately, leaning into it and parting her lips so they could taste each other. The salt, the warmth, the unadulterated scent of human. The kisses chained together, one beginning before the first had really ended.

He felt the fabric of his waistcoat give way. While Rhys was busy tasting and smelling Sasha, she had gotten to work methodically unbuttoning each layer of his clothing. A sharp thrill surged through Rhys’ torso. The more urgently Sasha undressed him, the more likely it was that they were actually, for certain, honest to god, going to have sex, right here, in his sad CEO sleeping corner. It was happening so fast, and Rhys prayed to every god out there that it wouldn’t slow down.

At this point his shirt was completely open, and Sasha slid his clothes over his shoulders to expose his entire torso--stopping only when she revealed his sprawling, bright blue tattoo.

“Oh,” Sasha said, staring at his sleeve tattoo with her head cocked to one side.

Rhys finished shrugging off his shirt and tossed them aside in a crumpled pile. “Yeah, I got it in college. It’s supposed to mean--ah, wow, um, you--you don’t actually care.” Sasha had leaned forward and started to nibble on his collarbone, all the while dragging her fingernails down his sides. “I can tell you that story later,” Rhys mumbled. “I--it’s--it’s not important.”

Sasha paused. “Rhys. Please do something with your mouth that isn’t talking.”

He took that as an invitation to catch her mouth again in a new, frantic string of kisses. Sasha had essentially crawled into his lap at this point, pinning Rhys against the wall as her hands wandered across his chest and up cradle his chin.

Rhys reached under her shirt to grasp her waist, but drew back when Sasha shivered with a sudden gasp. He had touched her bare skin with his cold, metal hand. “I forgot,” Rhys said, flexing his robotic fingers. “I probably have a glove or an oven mitt I can put on...somewhere.”

“It’s okay! It took me by surprise,” Sasha said. “But not in a bad way, you know?”

Taking the hint, his metal fingertips grazed the back of Sasha’s neck and down her spine, earning him a delicious moan and a shudder.

This was different. In Rhys’ experience, sexual partners tended to be wary of his cybernetic limb. Well, except for that one guy who asked if his fingers could vibrate (they couldn’t--not without the right attachments). They never sought to be touched by his Icy Business Hand. Watching Sasha’s skin ripple with goosebumps, sighing with pleasure, Rhys wondered why he never thought to try this out more.

Sasha quickly lost her shirt and bra. Rhys hovered over her, grazing his metal trailed across her chest and down her stomach, delighting in her every gasp. He traced her scars, her stretch marks, the ridge of her collar bone. She responded in kind with with a nip on his ear lobe and sharp nails lighting dragging down his back. Rhys was so sex starved that literally the any touch sent him reeling.

“So, we doing this?” She paused. “I mean, do you want to do this?”

“Yes. Ohhhh, yes. Wait, no, hold on.”

Rhys almost rolled off the bed leaning towards his desk. He pulled out an entire drawer, bringing down a shower of colorful condom packages (“The Atlas Dong Shield, Protection That Never Expires!”) over his shoulder and onto the floor.

Sasha snorted. “Seriously, Rhys?”

“Atlas used to mass produce these,” he said, sifting through the packages to find a condom that wasn’t bright green or purple. “Though I’m inclined to bring the product line back for public health and stuff.”

“Uh huh, and stuff.”

Rhys tore open the package of an orange condom and slipped it on. “Okay, now we’re ready to rock.” Now he was the one to pause. She was staring at his crotch with something that wasn’t entirely desire. “Or, _I’m_ ready to rock. Are you ready?”

Sasha blinked. “What? Oh yeah, totally ready. It just hit me that I’m looking at your dick. Like, you’re Rhys. And that’s _your dick!_ Rhys’ dick. Right there. The whole thing. _”_

“It sure is.” He adopted a power pose right on the bed. “So, you want to keep looking at it or--hnnnng.”

* * *

 

Rhys ran his right index finger up and down the crease between Sasha’s stomach and hip bone. He would live in that crevice, if such a thing were possible. His finger trailed from her hip towards her belly button, and Sasha giggled as she kicked him away.

“Don’t,” she said with a sleepy laugh. “You know I have trust issues. Tickling only makes them worse.”

They snuggled together underneath Rhys’s secondhand sheets. “That’s weird, I thought you only had intimacy issues,” he said.

“Eh, they’re basically the same issues.”

An impish look crossed Sasha’s features, and before Rhys could react, her fingers descended upon his sides in a tickling nightmare.

Ten minutes of wrestling later, they lay motionless on the mattress, completely spent.

“Okay, now _I_ have trust issues,” Rhys said breathlessly.

“Yay, we match,” Sasha replied.

Rhys considered taking an early retirement and just living in his sleeping corner, tickling and banging Sasha off and on for the rest of his days. If every night ended like this one, he’d be set up for life.

Doubt edged into his happiness. What had they even been doing tonight? Sasha was just his friend. This was probably a one-time experience brought on by pent up stress and boredom. Tomorrow he’d be back to the grindstone, working himself to the bone towards a goal that might never pay off. She would go back to bartending and living with her sister, and they’d never speak of this ever again.

Maybe they didn’t have to pretend it never happened. Would Sasha _want_ to hook up again? Rhys would never know unless he asked.

“I’m just going to throw out there that doing this more? I’d be down. Like, one hundred and ten percent,” he said.

Sasha looked shocked for a moment before shooting Rhys a smile--a very tired one. “Rhys, we just spent hours talking about how busy and exhausted we are. I dunno…”

“No, no, no, I’m not talking about that,” Rhys assured her. “I meant, if you ever need to let off steam, or if you’re just bored, we could hang out like, like _this_ again. Like friends--”

“Who bang.”

“--with benefits. Same thing.” Rhys began to play with the bedsheet, rubbing the fabric between two fingertips that couldn’t feel. At another time, in another place, they might’ve been wrapped up in each other, sharing languid kisses and nodding off to sleep. Not negotiating whether or not they’d ever sleep together again. Maybe next time, if there was one, they would get a chance to hold each other like that. In a friendly-type way, of course.

That was what Rhys really missed, he realized. Intimacy. The feeling of having another person--a person he really liked and trusted--close enough to touch and kiss.

Sasha chewed on her cheek, thinking. “Huh. Well, we are good friends. And we did just bang.”

“Yup. Sure did.”

“So it wouldn’t be any different, would it? It would be just like this.”

Rhys nodded. “Exactly. We’d hang n’ bang. No pressure, no strings. Just like this. Casual.”

“Casual,” she agreed. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

The prospect of getting laid on the regular filled Rhys with energy. Still naked, he sprang to his feet and made for his computer. “Great! I’ll whip up some standard documentation so we can hash out the details. You want an NDA?”

Sasha sat up on the mattress and rolled her eyes. “Can’t we can casually see each other without a piece of paper giving us permission?” she asked. “That’s the whole point of no strings. No conditions, no rules, no paper trail. We just have fun together until one or both of us finds something--or someone--better to do.”

Rhys found himself nodding, because he had an instinct for when a sale was ready to close. “Huh. Yeah, you’re right, we don’t need a contract. We can just wing it. Like, how complicated can two best friends banging’ possibly be?”

**Author's Note:**

> I anticipate posting a followup to this with Sasha's POV. 
> 
> I look forward to your comments! Thank you for reading!


End file.
